Bush quote for the day:

“‘Terrorists’ can’t be God-believing people.”

Hoo boy.

Internet portals 2.0? I'll stick with Google thanks

So I've discovered the existence of Netvibes. A place where you can access all your online content or somesuch. I have to wonder: what's the point? I already have technology to access all the online content that interests me: it's called a web browser.

It reminds me of the now long-dead "portal" craze going on when I first discovered the Internet in 1995. People like Yahoo and Netscape were vying to create a single Internet point of presence - a "portal to the Internet" if you will - which aggregated things like websearch, news headlines and weather forecasts on a single page. Now we have people like Yahoo and Newsvibe vying to create a single Internet point of presence which aggreates things like blogsearch, news headlines and RSS feeds on a single page, using Ajax. Portal 2.0.

I wonder if it'll be as uninspiring a flash-in-the-pan as the 1.0 version?

About the only useful thing I can see Portal 2.0 concepts doing is allowing online data to be presented in a manner more appealing to the user. But that isn't exactly what Newsvibe does. What it does is provide a limited framework for aggregating information in away that Newsvibe pre-determines. I have to say on first glance that I don't like it very much. It's easier and more convenient for me to visit digg.com's website directly rather than mess about with the limited control over content that Netvibe's digg.com module gives me. I haven't checked out the RSS feeds yet.

Not sure I will either given the existence of Google Reader. Google I think gets the "point of presence" idea a little better I think. Sure, there's Google homepage where you can aggregate some stuff, but they don't cram everything into a single framework. There's an individual application interface for Gmail, a different one for Google Reader, another one for Google News. I don't know exactly what Google's style of providing different ways to examine different types of online data is called, but it feels more comfortable and usable. Google Reader and Google News feel like they supplement my web-browsing style, unlike Newsvibe's "Portal" approach which feels like it's trying to replace it. Badly. Maybe that's what bugs me about Newsvibe: they don't recognise the differences between different kinds of content. I think Google does.

I guess I'm turning into a Google fanboy. But really, can you blame me?

Howards new you-beaut citizenship test

An Australian citizenship test? I honestly thought we'd heard the last of that after it was laughed out of the public sphere when the PM first floated the idea. Guess not.

From the Australian's editorial in support of the test

If three months of feedback to the Government's discussion paper on the issue is any guide, there is overwhelming public support for the initiative. Ninety-five per cent of respondents agree that basic English language skills should be compulsory, and 93 per cent consider an understanding of core Australian values to be essential for migrants to make the most of the opportunities in their adopted land.

Can I call bullshit on this? Saying "we think that migrants need to learn and adopt our values to live here successfully" is not at all the same thing as saying "we think the government should ram 'Australian values' down migrants throats".

Then of course there's the question of what "Australian values" are. This isn't as hard as it sounds I think. For example, one Australian value that I like is a healthy disrespect and distrust of politicians. I don't trust John Howard to implement this test. I don't think it will be pushing what "Australian values" are so much as what John Howard would like "Australian values" to be.

Paranoid? Probably. But when it comes right down to it, I don't think it's the Government's job to define values to its citizens - even to its new citizens - so much as it's the citizens' job to have a government that reflects their values.

I don't think the concept of having an Australian citizenship test accurately reflects Australian values. Especially not one that asks questions about Australian history. We're famously bad at knowing our own country's history. To expect new citizens to learn about it in order to be citizens seems, well....un-Australian.

ISG report: the press conference version

My opinion: the content of the Baker-Hamilton report isn't as important in forming policy so much as the political interpretation of that report, particularly how the US-UK governments spin it to make it line up with their future Iraq policy.

I haven't read the report. My impressions - like that of the average Western citizen - currently come from media reporting of it. Here's a transcript of a press conference with Bush and Blair for analysis.

First item of note, Bush has committed to the existence of a Palestinian state, I believe the first US president ever to do so:"In the Palestinian territories, they are working to stop moderate leaders like President Abbas from making progress toward the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security." Blair echos later on, showing it wasn't a mis-statement: "You are the first president who committed yourself to the two- state solution." I wonder how the Israeli political establishment feels about that?

I've read elsewhere that one of the reasons Blair was so willing to chum it up with Bush was as a way of trying to exert pressure to get a better deal for the Palestinians in Israel/Palestine negotiations. I guess he's succeeded in that, even though it looks like his own political career is basically over now after going against too many of his own constituents on the Iraq war issue.

The vision of the Middle East that Bush/Blair are pushing is pretty blatant: it's evil terrorists and exremists vs good democracy-lovers and moderates. I wonder if those four concepts always line up on two polarised sides like that? Hamas was democratically elected in Palestine after all. And Hezbollah faired pretty well at the polls in the elections in Lebanon.

I get tired of sloganeering in place of actual policy. From reading the conference I get the impression that Bush/Blair's top priority in dealing with the US mid-term electoral smackdown was changing the slogan: "stay the course" and "win hearts and minds" are out, "find a way forward" is in. It is repeated ENDLESSLY! Bush even pushes the "way forward" slogan as a way of avoiding a question:

QUESTION: Why did it take others to say it[that the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating] before you've been willing to acknowledge it to the world?

BUSH: You know, in all due respect, I've been saying it a lot[um...has he? I sure haven't heard it]. I understand how tough it is, and I've been telling the American people how tough it is. And they know how tough it is.

And the fundamental question is: Do we have a plan to achieve our objective? Are we willing to change as the enemy has changed?

And what the Baker-Hamilton study has done is it shows good ideas as to how to go forward. What our Pentagon is doing is figuring out ways to go forward -- all aiming to achieve our objective.

The "finding a way to go forward" slogan just doesn't seem to be getting into media headlines the way the "stay the course" slogan did, though.

Reading the tea leaves, and from previous efforts with slogans, I predict that in six month's time, maybe a year's time, we'll still be repeatedly being told that Bush is boldly and confidently "finding a way to go forward", and will continue to be "finding a way to go forward", until it becomes blatantly obvious that the war effort is not "going forward" and is never going to "go forward", because there is no way to "go forward". We'll see how long Bush/Blair's "we're all about finding a way to go forward" posturing can obscure that from the American public.

On negotiation with Syria and Iran, Bush and Blair seem to split. My impression is that Bush really doesn't want it, and is trying to find a way to lay the blame for not negotiating with Iran and Syria at the feet of Iran and Syria:

When people -- if people come to the table to discuss Iraq, they need to come understanding their responsibilities -- to not fund terrorists, to help this young democracy survive, to help with the economics of the country.

BUSH: And if people are not committed -- if Syria and Iran is not committed to that concept, then they shouldn't bother to show up.

I heard this particular excerpt spoken aloud on the radio while riding a taxi. Bush sounded really angry when he was saying this. I really don't know what's going on in his head here, but I'm pretty sure that the idea of negotiating with Evil on Earth isn't something he would ever be willing to do. Please God, let us never have another Evangelical Christian as President of the United States.

Blair's more open to the idea, and has a comment which to my mind sounds like someone who is good at diplomacy, unlike, President Cowboy:

And let me come directly to the Iran and Syria point. The issue, for me, is not a question of being unwilling to sit down with people or not, but the basis upon which we discuss Iraq has got to be clear and it's got to be a basis where we are all standing up for the right principles, which are now endorsed in the United Nations resolutions, in respect of Iraq.

At which point, he points the finger at Iran:

BLAIR: In other words, you support the democratic-elected government, you do not support sectarians, and you do not support, arm or finance terrorists.

Now, the very reason we have problems in parts of Iraq -- and we know this very well down in the south of Iraq -- is that Iran, for example, has been doing that. It's been basically arming, financing, supporting terrorism.

Hmmm. Maybe not that good at diplomacy...

Blair also mentions how "the old Middle East had, within it, the origins of all the problems we see." Are we still talking about magically solving all of that region's deepseated problems through the neoconservative pipedream of creating a "new Middle East" through military might, Mr Blair? Well, to be fair, the UK I think understands that military strength alone is not enough. But to have an echo of the neoconservative utopia-pretensions for the Middle East in Blair's commentary is deeply unsettling.

Last point before I finish off, this comment from Blair:

Its[Iraq's] people can either be presented with a choice between a secular or a religious dictatorship, which is not a choice that any free people would ever choose.

seems way off the mark, and indicates even further his embrace of the wrong-headed idealism of neoconservatism. "Free people" I believe are entirely willing - eager, even - to embrace dictatorship and oppression of people, so long as there's a pretty good chance that they are the ones who get to do the oppressing.

People will not choose to be an oppressee, but we are often all too willing to choose to be an oppressor. Perhaps we might justify it to ourselves with the usual moral equivocations - "they did it to us for so long", "it's not oppression if they deserve what they get", there are others I'm sure - but we would be freely choosing oppression nonetheless. That is a part of human nature that Bush and Blair's grand vision of a "new Middle East" doesn't take into account. That's why this vision simply cannot work.

The Iraqi blame game

Seems the remaining opinionaters who still think the Iraq war was a good idea even now have to find a scapegoat for the failure of Bush II to deliver on anything that was promised by the invasion. The targets of blame for the Bush Administration's own failures appears to have been narrowed down to two:
1. Blame the American people. Supposedly everything would be fine if the Bush Administration hadn't been hampered by skittish voters refusing to allow Bush to fight the war the way he wanted to fight it. The level of historical revisionism needed to make that one float is pretty impressive. But there are True Believers[tm] out there still who accept it, apparently.

2 Blame the Iraqi people. In this scenario, it wasn't a failure of Bush's "new Middle East" policy that has brought Iraq to ruin, but a failure of the Iraqi voting public to properly take advantage of the opportunity afforded to them. Do I detect a smidgeon of cultural chauvinism here? I think I do.

Novell-Linux-Microsoft

Big news in the open source community as longtime foe of Open Source[tm] Microsoft signs an agreement with Linux provider Novell. Groklaw is blogging hard, naturally. No doubt my understanding will change considerably after reading through all the detail there, but for now...

The deal involved Novell paying Microsoft a total $40 million over 5 years "from revenues obtained through selling products containing Microsoft patents."(see this ITwire articl, among many others). My thought at the time was that this move should be read not so much as "Novell is free from threats of patent lawsuits from Microsoft" as it should be read as "Microsoft is about to start threatening linux companies that aren't Novell with patent lawsuits".

Steve Ballmer has now strongly implied that this is the case by bluntly claiming that Linux "uses our[Microsoft's] patented intellectual property" (see this Seattle Intelligencer blogpost), and claiming that Linux distributors owe Microsoft compensation for it.

The reaction from the open source community is similar to what happened when SCO tried to claim the Linux kernel contained copyrighted code that SCO owned and hadn't licensed under the GPL:"If Linux violates Microsoft’s patents, let’s see the proof".

Weeell....there's no certainty that Ballmer is referring only to the Linux kernel. It's easy to forget that "Linux" can refer both to the OS kernel and to the OS itself (Richard Stallman's probably futile effort to have the OS proper referred to as "GNU/Linux" instead of "Linux" notwithstanding). So the vague allegation is even vaguer than it first appears. Where could these alleged infringements be? The kernel? Glibc? Somewhere in Openoffice.org? Hiding in the multifunctionality of the grep command?

Software patents are becoming something of a headache in the US. It's possible that any number of large-scale software projects contain any number of patent violations owing to the sheer number of software patents floating around. It's entirely possible that the many components of your typical GNU/Linux system may have a few inadvertent patent violations in there.

IT companies usually manage to avoid patent lawsuits by acquiring software patents of their own which they can use as a deterrent: "you sue us, we see you", a sort of Mutually Assured Destruction policy. It's worth noting here that the Microsoft-Novell patent deal was reciprocal: Microsoft is safe from any fear of infringing on Novell's patents now. It is not clear to me how that works (or doesn't work) when a software system is designed and maintained not by a single limited liability company, but by an amorphous mass of volunteer coders.

Can open source software manage to deal with patents? Software licensed under the Gnu General Public License (which includes most components of most GNU/Linux distributions) has a fairly straightforward restriction laid out by Section 7 of that license: "if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program."

So, if Novell paid Microsoft $40 million for the use of Microsoft's patents which allegedly exist in GNU/Linux, and that money will be coming from "revenues obtained through selling products containing Microsoft patents", is Novell collecting royalties for Microsoft on its Linux sales? Has Novell committed to violation of the GPL?

Maybe it's all FUD. Maybe Linux distributions don't violate any Microsoft patents at all. But maybe the Novell deal is an opportunity to muddy the waters, suggest that, gee, maybe that pesky GPL is more of a burden than a benefit what with the possibility that you could be forced to stop distributing your software entirely if it's found to infringe on somebody's patents

Perhaps related to all this, here's an odd little co-incidence:
1. According to Novell's FAQ on the deal, the agreement focuses on technical co-operation in three main areas:virtualization, web services management and document format compatibility. Document format? Would that include Office document formats by any chance?
2. As of 20th November, basic support for Microsoft's VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) language has been thrown up into Openoffice.org's source code, per this blogpost
3.The ever-so-helpful and generous entity to give Openoffice.org this support for a previously Microsoft-only format? Novell. They've already incorporated the new functionality into Novell's own version of OO.o

Things that make you go hmmm...

The anti-gay perception of homosexuality

Leaving aside the actual morality of "outing" in general, and Ted Haggard's "outing" in particular, the responses from some of the anti-gay Right highlighted for me a distinction between the anti-gay perspective of homosexuality and homosexual people's perspective of homosexuality. It's a distinction which I think many supporters of GLBT rights miss.

I think most people know the story so far, but in any case here's a video summary of the Ted Haggard situation courtesy of Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. The online reaction of arch-conservative David Frum to it all was...interesting, to say the least:

Consider the hypothetical case of two men. Both are inclined toward homosexuality. Both from time to time hire the services of male prostitutes. Both have occasionally succumbed to drug abuse.

One of them marries, raises a family, preaches Christian principles, and tries generally to encourage people to lead stable lives.

The other publicly reveals his homosexuality, vilifies traditional moral principles, and urges the legalization of drugs and prostitution.

Which man is leading the more moral life? It seems to me that the answer is the first one.

Naturally many people around the blogosphere took great exception to the idea that it is better to go behind your wife and children's backs, publicly condemning the very behaviour in which you're engaging to millions, than it is to live as an openly gay man. But Frum's perspective is partially understandable - in his understanding of homosexuality at least.

Note the phrasing he uses: not "homosexual", but "inclined towards homosexuality". Further down in the same article Frum says this:

If a religious leader has a personal inclination toward homosexuality - and nonetheless can look past his own inclination to defend the institution of marriage and to affirm its benefits for the raising of children - why should he likewise not be honored for his intellectual firmness and moral integrity?

Again, not "homosexual", but "a personal inclination toward homosexuality". And it's better to marry and try to embrace even a semblance of a "heterosexual lifestyle" than it is to "give in" to homosexuality.

See, in the anti-gay perspective, everyone is innately heterosexual. Homosexuality isn't an alternative sexuality that exists in a person instead of heterosexuality, but a fetish that stems from a distortion of the true (heterosexual) desires that God instils in everyone. Dr Joseph Nicolosi of NARTH summed up the perspective like this: "there are no homosexuals, only heterosexuals with a homosexual problem". For a man "inclined to homosexuality" to marry a woman isn't, as the pro-gay perspective would have it, an imprisonment of both man and woman in a loveless sham, but a valid and worthwhile attempt for the man to overcome his temptations and express his innate, Godly desire for a woman who, by God's law, he must marry.

That's David Frum's perspective of Ted Haggard as I understand it. His attempt to justify the emotional pain that this could be causing Mrs Haggard, though, is curiously missing. Then again, she is a woman after all, and misogyny and anti-gay sentiment often seem to be fellow travellers in my experience.

Al-Hilali's speech

You know, there are two things in Sheik Al-Hilali's speech which disturb me but which haven't been reported in the media. I guess the colourful "uncovered meat" analogy sells more papers without the pollution of more detailed analysis.

One:

"Because there is a crime of polytheism. God does not forgive polytheism, and forgives everything else. These people said that God took a son, these people said that divinity united with man, and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and they will see mercy? They will never see it, not him or his father. Not dad or mum. No one will see mercy, of those who believe in polytheism....

...Those who disbelieve amongst the people of the Book and the polytheists, where will they go? Surfers Paradise? Gold Coast? Where? To the fire of hell."

I'm not sure how I feel about the preacher of one religion saying that the people who believe one of the core teachings of a rival religion are going to hell. I'm pretty sure that if a Christian preacher said something like "those heathens who follow Mohammed's teachings, foolishly and wrongly believing him to be a Prophet, are going to hell for their denial of the One True Saviour", then there would be outrage among the Muslim community. Should the Christian community react any diferently to a Sheikh preaching that believing in the Trinity is a gateway to hell?

On the other hand, I really can't get worked up over two Abrahamic religions essentially playing "My God is realler than your God". So juvenile.

Two:

The Al-Rafihi scholar says in one of his literary works, he says: If I come across a crime of rape - kidnap and violation of honour - I would discipline the man and teach him a lesson in morals, and I would order the woman be arrested and jailed for life.

I find the implication that a woman should be jailed for being raped to be deeply, deeply disturbing. The cat-meat analogy pales in comparison to this. I don't understand why it hasn't been reported more. Have I misunderstood somthing?

Moral fallacies?

That's the best name I can come up with so far. Maybe there's a better one, I don't know.

Anyway, I found a site called Muslim Village. The forums section has a post arguing that Sheik Al-Hilali has done nothing wrong and that it's a deliberate plot by Islam-haters to attack a good man:

It is well known that for the past few years there has been a concentrated effort to oust the Sheikh by some groups. To his credit and many of his supporters they have stood their ground. We, the rest of the community should support them and help them to make one more stand at this most vital time.

For if the events of last week are any indication the opposition is nothing but a self serving group of egomaniacs who have only their own interest at heart...

...in that group there was someone who recorded that conversation. Took the tape home laughing all the way back home trying to figure out how to best exploit their latest find. How best to damage the Sheikh? In the process completely ignoring the pain it will cause the community.

This is where you see how selfish these people were, for they have no interest in the Muslim community.

This is a moral fallacy I see a lot in several contexts: the writer appears to believe that an action is either a good action performed with good intentions, or a harmful act performed with evil intentions. There is no concept that the harm the writer of this piece feels at the attack on Hilali could have been unintentional, done with good intentions even, or that the person who provided the tape to the media might believe that the writer's feeing of hurt is unjustified and no actual harm has been done at all: it MUST be due to "a shadowy group who we know nothing about, who are driven by self interest" that want to promote evil, and there is no question that the accusations levelled against Al-Hilali MUST be false.

Why does the writer believe that the accusations must be false? Their reasoning shows another moral fallacy: judging the morality of an action not by the action, but by the identity of the person performing it. The core of the writer's claim that the content of the speech was wrong skips the actual content of the speech in question completely, favoring instead a moral calculus in which a person who does previously done many good works is immediately placed in the "good" camp, and nothing they then do removes them from it.

The issue is not that what the Sheikh said was right or wrong. After all he is only human, and has never claimed to be perfect so to err is only human. But his long track record of good work in the community with the youth and others surely far outweigh his one mistake.

Personally I've never subscribed to a school of morality which implies that a person who saves thousands of lives can be forgiven a murder or two (the "Faith the Vampire Slayer" school of morality).

Who's to blame for Pastor Haggard's fall from grace? His fat, lazy wife: an Evangelical implies that one of the things that might lead a married man into soliciting male prostitutes for sex is a wife who doesn't stay sexy:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors' wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either.

The moral fallacy here is a common one to men: the belief that it is the responsibility of women to account for and work around the male sex drive. This far too prevalent belief is counter to the very concept of personal responsibility. Yes, the male sex drive is strong - I'm male, I know this - but it's not uncontrollable. Saying that a man's sexual motivations are the responsibility of women in any way is a shirking of the responsibility that a man has to learn self-discipline as far as I'm concerned.

And here's one where I don't know where the moral fallacy may lie: in the wake of an Evangelical preacher who was accused of maintaining a relationship with a gay prostitute and of routinely using crystal meth, right-wing commentator David Frum claims that a man who marries and has children while having gay sex and abusing drugs is morally superior to one who does so openly:

Consider the hypothetical case of two men. Both are inclined toward homosexuality. Both from time to time hire the services of male prostitutes. Both have occasionally succumbed to drug abuse.

One of them marries, raises a family, preaches Christian principles, and tries generally to encourage people to lead stable lives.

The other publicly reveals his homosexuality, vilifies traditional moral principles, and urges the legalization of drugs and prostitution.

Which man is leading the more moral life? It seems to me that the answer is the first one.

I'm so flabbergasted that someone could see it like that that I don't think I can locate the moral fallacy at all. The whole "lying" aspect of Haggard's situation seems to simply not register here. I think it has something to do with group loyalty over-riding objective assessment of the situation, but I really don't know for sure.

Muslims being rallied for Al-Hilali

Muslims rally behind embattled leader, from the Sydney Morning Herald. There's a rally being pulled together, without any central organiser judging by the contradictory texts that have been flying about in regards to time and place, to show "solidarity". God I hate that word.

I'm a little scared that this could turn violent. I'm not the only one, as the SMH also reports. That said, there's a strong desire for a peaceful rally among many potential participants if news.com.au is to be believed.

From the second SMH article:

He[Dr Jamal Rifi, a Muslim and critic of Al-Hilali] said the sheik's "lieutenants" had used the last few days while the sheik has been in hospital to bolster support for the cleric in Lakemba. "There are people out there in the street saying, 'This [backlash] is not against al Hilaly, this is against all Islam'," he said.

I can sort of see what's going to happen. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims are going to demonstrate their non-support of Al Hilaly by staying away from the rally. Meanwhile the small but dedicated extremist Muslims will demonstrate in support of Al Hilali as if the problem is with the media reporting of Al Hilali's comments rather than Al Hilali's comments, portraying it as an attack on Islam. The Australian media, ever eager for controversy, will have reporting with headlines like "Muslims demonstrate their support for Al Hilali". The Daily Telegraph in particular I expect to be particularly bombastic - let's see...."Muslims line up to support evil cleric" would be about the tenor I think. The Muslims who didn't rally who see these headlines will be angered by the headlines and believe that maybe Al-Hilali's supporters have a point and it really is about attacking Islam, with actual truth like the thousands of Muslims existing who don't support Al Hilali being overlooked in the anti-Islam hate campaign.

The real reasons for the "the muslims support Al-Hilali" rhetoric from media would be I expect because the radicals would be publicly repeating it to try and make as many people as possible believe it. The over-reaching statement of full Muslim support would become a self-fulfilling prophecy as moderates find that simply remaining silent is not enough to make the "muslims suppport Al-Hilali" headlines go away.

Note the different places where the quotation marks full in the last paragraph. It's a small but absolutely vital distinction, and one I expect many of Hilali's radical supporters to be trying to gloss over at every opportunity.

It's nice and convenient to divvy up a population into "nice moderates" and "nasty radicals" but the division isn't so clear-cut. Radicals can de-radicalise, moderates can be radicalised, and it's not like there's a clean and obvious distinction between moderation and radicalism. The main problem as I see it with the Islamic community is that the heavy-duty radicals are trying to radicalise as much of the Muslim population as they can, the more moderately-inclined Muslims are unaware of this, or else are grievously underestimating the extent to which it is occurring, and this unawareness is making it easier for the radicals to radicalise Muslims by misportraying any reaction to radicalism as unfounded in reality (since the moderately-inclined don't view the radical minority as the problem that the non-Muslim community does) and re-orienting in the not-so-moderately inclined Muslims the idea that the reaction to radicalism is a reaction to the very existence of the religion of Islam.

One thing I am thankful for so far is that no mainstream organisation has (yet) come out and said that Islam is inherently evil. I think that would be, um, very bad: just what the hard-core radical Islamic minority would want in order better to radicalise more of the Australian Islamic community.

The Niqab in the UK

Two constrasting articles on the Muslim teacher in the UK who wanted to wear a Niqab while teaching.

A straight-up news article from the Times of India: Veil row: Muslim woman's niqab tests UK

Then there's this editorial from the Khaleej Times: What about their right to choose?

From Iraq

There is talk that the hospitals are the same. Some Sunni patients have been yanked from their beds, dragged screaming through the corridors and executed in front of doctors, nurses, patients, families. It's even been written about in a few newspapers. But only a few people know for sure — and they are not saying if it's true or not, or how often it's happened. It's virtually impossible for journalists to find out. As one U.S. military officer put it, "Iraq’s entire health care system has been hijacked by the Mehdi Army militia, (belonging to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr), the Health Minister won’t even talk to us."

- Too Late For Baghdad?, CBS News

I was a reluctant supporter of the Iraq war.

There are no words.

Text of Bush's Comments on N. Korea Nuclear Test

Hopeful signs: he is emphasising multilateralism. Negotiations and the UN Security council are the first port of call:

Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond.

This was confirmed this morning in conversations I had with leaders of China and South Korea, Russia and Japan. We reaffirmed our commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. And all of us agreed that the proclaimed actions taken by North Korea are unacceptable and deserve an immediate response by the United Nations Security Council.

Worrying signs: neoconservative ideas that showed up in Iraq rhetoric also showed up when talkingabout North Korea. There's the "WMDs could be given to terrorists" meme:

The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or nonstate entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable the consequences of such action.

*sigh* Why does everything have to be about the US? Other countries are more directly in the line of fire right now. Shouldn't their interests be primary?

Disconcertingly, there was also the "ZOMG OPPRESSION" meme:

Today's claim by North Korea serves only to raise tensions, while depriving the North Korean people of the increased prosperity and better relations with the world offered by the implementation of the joint statement of the six-party talks.

The oppressed and impoverished people of North Korea deserve that brighter future.

I'm sure they do, but, uh, how? At least he's saying that it's diplomacy rather than regime change that would bring this increased prosperity and better relations about. Maybe I'm just jaded, but it was weird seeing the plight of the North Korean people brought up by El Presidente for what I think is the first time ever.

I get the impression that there was some give-and-take between neoconservatives and, um, not-neoconservative policymakers(what are they called?) in the drafting of that speech: emphasise the WMD-terrorist angle and the suffering of people under an Evil Dictator[tm], but also state a commitment to multilateral engagement and a willingness to use diplomacy rather than military action as a first resort.

Anti-gay sentiment

The specifics of current anti-queer rhetorical points include:

Homosexual=predator: This one goes waaaay back. There's a 1950's US government propaganda education film about it called Boys Beware warning kids that "you never know when the homosexual is about". It even survives today as seen in this op-ed on Mark Foley:

Where does post-modern American ethics place Mark Foley's homosexuality on a scale of 1 to 10--a 1 being just another gay guy and a 10 being a compulsive, predatory sex offender?

. That quote does make perfect sense to some people: since being homosexual is exactly equivalent to being a sexual predator, then accepting homosexuality is exactly equivalent to accepting sexual predation.

There's also the tendency for the Republican party flacks to claim that they took no action against Foley before the media hit shit the fan on the grounds that it would have come across as gay-bashing. Leaving aside the question why these ferocious culture warriors who've spent plenty of government time and money hating on "militant homosexual activists" suddenly had to run like timid gazelles from the Homosexual Agenda[tm] in this particular instance, it also shows the continuing tendency to conflate sexual predation with homosexuality: "Those damn homos wouldn't have liked us stopping a sexual predator, see? Because his sexual predation is what makes him one of them".

Attacks on transgender people: with homosexuality gaining increasing tolerance and acceptance in society, many of the old myths about homosexuality are losing ground in the face of visible reality (the Far Right's misrepresentation of Foley's actions as typical homosexual behaviour notwithstanding). The attacks on the "freakshow" aspect of GLBT people's lives now seems increasingly focused on the T: transgender. This includes the Daily Telegraph's attack articles on the childcare "scandal" which described transgender people as people who have the atttiude of gender as being something that they can "change as easily as a person change's socks". The op-ed above insinuates that accepting transgenderism as valid means being required to accept something as uncertain that is supposed to always be certain: "There is much in American life that doesn't seem "obvious" anymore. Call it the transgendering of reality." The message is that those transgender weirdos are trying to deny the "obvious" reality of "basic biology" when they claim not to be their "true" gender ie the one they were born as. It helps some gay and lesbian people may be less than comfortable with transgenderism as well. I know I have a certain amount of transphobia within myself. In my defense, it wasn't that long ago that I was homophobic as well. I'm working on it.

Then there's the more subtle conflation of transgenderism and homosexuality, to try and treat the two as exactly equivalent so that myths about transgender people can get tarred on to GLB people as well. The Traditional Values Coalition in the US recently released an anti-homosexual, anti-transgender polemic called Will Cross-Dressing Activists Come To Your School? which says this:

TVC has long warned that one of the next phases of the homosexual movement is to normalize cross-dressing and sex change operations. The ultimate goal is to blur all distinctions between male and female-and to destroy marriage as a God-ordained institution.

Transgenderism is all a homosexual plot, see?

Thankfully gay rights organisations haven't tried to distance themselves from transgender issues in the face of this shared smearing to my knowledge.

Howard on Islam

"There is a section, a small section, of the Islamic population . . . which is very resistant to integration.

"Fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language, if you don't already speak it.

"People who come from societies where women are treated in an inferior fashion have got to learn very quickly that that is not the case in Australia." - John Howard.

Okay, first, I don't see this as any kind of cynical ploy or anything that might suggest Fearless Leader isn't stating what he believes to be 100% truth. I think Howard believes that society should be monocultural, that it should remain basically the same as it has been for generations, and that people who arrive should assimilate into it with zero regard for any benefits to Australia that their original culture may bring to us. Strength through conformity and tradition are more important than strength through individuality and adaptation in this worldview. I disagree with it, but I don't doubt the sincerity of those who might agree with it, such as the Prime Minister.

Second, remember when we were supposed to be worried about being swamped by Asians? How quickly people forget. Which brings me to one reason why I think Muslims are getting singled out now in the same way that Asians were singled out last decade: because they are unfamiliar, and their unfamiliarity is most visible right now. It's stupid, but the good news if Hansonism is anything to go by is that such stupidity only lasts for a few years at a time. The bad news is that the reason that one group stops being viewed as an unfamiliar danger may be simply because a new group's alleged unfamiliar danger has taken its place.

Third, an anecdote: my sister mentioned a friend of hers who emigrated from Lebanon. She is a Muslim and didn't wear a headscarf when she first arrived here. She had children and grandchildren while here. Those children pressured her into wearing the headscarf on the grounds that they didn't view her as a true Muslim unless she did so.

People who view Islamic extremism as an immigration problem might want to ponder that. Me, I view Islamic extremism as an attempt to resolve an identity crisis in the children of immigrants who find themselves caught betweeen the security of conformity offered by mainstream Islam and
the enabling freedom of first-world living. The above example is hardly evidence of anything violent, but I do think it's telling that the more rigid structures of Islam were accepted - and enforced - by the children of an immigrant more than they were by the immigrant herself.

Islam and The Left

The Left and the Jihad

I confess to finding the Left's wholehearted embrace of Islam incomprehensible. Certainly there is considerable undeserved animosity towards Moslems whose only "crime" is to claim adherence to the religion of Islam, but that seems to get translated somehow into a worldview in which no adherent of Islam can do anything wrong so long as what they're doing is done in the name of Islam (or perhaps more accurately, done in the name of opposing the West).

The above link documents the history of Islamist groups' (where "Islamism" is a political ideology derived from the religion of Islam) opposition to the political ideology of the Left in the 20th century. I appreciate the concerns of religious bigotry that can easily run rampant when dealing with what to many is an unfamiliar religious philosophy, but I draw the line at accepting that jihadism is the name of nothing more than a just and acceptable response to Western imperialism. Rather, I see it as a fundamentalist strain of Islam that's at least as potent and dangerous as that practised by their Christian fundamentalist counterparts, to which anyone concerned with freedom and equality - as the modern Left allegedly is - would be implacably opposed.

I assume I can criticise Christian fundamentalism without people viewing me as attacking Christianity as a whole. Can I criticise Islamic fundamentalism without it getting viewed as an attack on Islam as a whole?

Evolving trends of war in the 21st century. The author describes how the receding necessity of war in Western nations places severe limits on the ease with which the West can practise it. He advises several strategies that Western nations would do best to avoid, all of which the Bush Administration have implemented, or is in the process of implementing.

Comment from Bruce Sterling: "I really worry that every word of this post is true."

Conspiracy theories as an attempt to make sense of a senseless world

Why conspiracy theories?

Humanity is driven by narrative. We tell stories about the world around us. We like those stories to make sense. We like those stories to have understandable reasons for playing out the way they do.

First, a lot of the "stories" that occur in reality make no sense, and have no reasons for why they happen the way they do. People are killed for no reason, good people are punished and bad people rewarded, things happen that don't fit any kind of narrative structure

A conspiracy theory provides a narrative. It replaces the terrifying arationality of blind chance with a more reassuring story in which events are under somebody's control. Even if those "somebodies" are mysterious and hidden figures, that's a better option for many than the idea that things "just happen" sometimes, without any ability to understand or influence them.

Second, sometimes we're presented with events which do line up in an understandable narrative - but it's a narrative that contradicts some other narrative about the world we've accepted as true. How to resolve the contradiction? Discard one of the narratives as false. Either the new narrative shows that we've misunderstood how the world works (discard the old), or the new narrative is viewed as not true (discard the new).

But if you "discard the new", a person still wants a narrative to make sense of the events which the discarded narrative described. One way to do this is to construct yet another narrative - but one in which the events are portrayed as lining up with the old worldview rather than contradicting it. So a bomb in Bali becomes a narrative in which the US is an evil mastermind rather than a narrative in which there are people in the world who slaughter the innocent in Allah's name. On some sites on the web, an ignomiously captured and defeated Saddam Hussein was fit into a narrative in which he was a tool of the US all along as a way of avoiding acceptance of a narrative in which his opposition to the US was a whole lot of empty posturing, with zero ability to back it up in action.

Third, sometimes a narrative has an appeal of elegance to it that makes it seem like it MUST be true. The allegation that the US government knew of the 1942 Pearl Harbour bombing in advance fits this mould: it seems so pat that the event which brought the US into World War 2 may have been allowed to go ahead in order to bring about that exact end-goal. But accepting that as true requires ignoring the role that blind chance plays in life. As said above, sometimes things "just happen" - even things like a punishing military strike which actually had the ultimate effect of aiding the Allies by bringing the US into the war.

Updated blog

Just spent an entertaining half hour switching over to Blogspot's "new system" and applying labels (what every other blogging system I've seen calls "tags") to my old posts. I don't know, it feels like there's something lacking in my old writings - it's over-written, and at the same time doesn't say everything I think I wanted to say.

Oh well, practice makes perfect I guess.

Bashir on the Bali Bombings

Bashir claims CIA bomb was used in Bali. I think I need to watch Foreign Correspondent before I comment too much, but in 2002 Bashir claimed that the bomb which caused the destruction in the Bali Bombings was the conventional bomb that Indonesian authorities said it was,but the United States was the one who actually constructed it because it was "too sophisticated" for Indonesians to make. That's Wikipedia's version of events but I can find no reference for the exact content of Bashir's October 12 2002 press conference in which he allegedly said this. A "micro-nuclear" device is part of a conspiracy theory dating back to almost immediately after the bombings.

Why embrace the "micro-nuclear" conspiracy? Especially if you've already previously articulated a conspiracy theory that contradicts it? Something to do with a perceived slight that the US has nukes and the Islamic world doesn't, perhaps? A way of saying that it must have been the US that did this act and not "good Muslims", because no "good Muslims" have nukes?

Alexander Downer called the claim "preposterous", telling ABC Radio "I don't think anyone would much believe anything he was saying". I would have to disagree, and it disturbs me that our Foreign Minister underestimates the potential appeal of a story which makes the US looks bad, makes Muslims look like undeserving victims and which may tap into latent fears of the US nuclear arsenal. To dismiss such remarks so cavalierly tells me that the Australian government really doesn't get the idea that America's so-called "War on Terror" is a clash of ideologies more than anything else. In such a conflict, failing to actively engage with and expose the flaws in the ideology of the opponent, as Downer has failed to do, will mean losing. We appear to be blindly following the US' idiotic path of believing that jihadists "hate us for our freedom", that "there's no reasoning with terrorists", and expecting that punitive action alone can win the day.

On a semi-related note, I can't help noticing that what passes for commercial papers' "journalism" on this topic is actually nothing more than expounding upon excerpts lifted from ABC news programming. Go the ABC, and boo to the so-called "news" outlets that can't even do their own investigative reporting without the ABC to spoonfeed them quotes on an issue du jour.